“Right now, our policies do not just allow, but promote, destitution.”
President Joe Biden recently told CBS’s Norah O’Donnell that he doesn’t believe the $15 minimum wage will be included in the final $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, but he plans to continue pushing for it in a standalone bill. A new report published by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that a $15 minimum wage hike would lift 900,000 people out of poverty while costing roughly 1.4 million jobs by 2025. The tradeoff has sparked a heated debate, but not all agree whether it’s the right issue to focus on. As Annie Lowrey writes in The Atlantic: “The question is what kind of economy we want to have, what kind of jobs we want to promote, and how much poverty we want families in relatively low-wage — and often brutally difficult, emotionally draining, physically tiring, and societally essential — jobs to experience.”
